


Winter in the Sky

by valerienne (valderys)



Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: Angst, M/M, Purple Prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-22
Updated: 2010-02-22
Packaged: 2017-10-07 11:28:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/64716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valderys/pseuds/valerienne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sky is blue, endlessly, infinitely blue, like the water in the glass after a child has swirled its brush.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winter in the Sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [light_the_sky76](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=light_the_sky76).



> A little OTT, I think, now :) Written as the result of a freckle-counting plot bunny from light_the_sky76 in 2005.

His hand rests on bare skin, just rests, nothing more. Billy lies on his back, staring and staring. The sky is blue, endlessly, infinitely blue, like the water in the glass after a child has swirled its brush, rinsing colour from the bleaching day to pool on the horizon; it swirls under his eyelids when he blinks. It swirls but he does nothing more than stare.

The skin under his hand is warm, it burns with light and heat. It tastes like lightning, he knows that for a fact, it tastes like summer storms that tickle in the nose, that tingle under the tongue. It is summer now half a world away from the summers of his boyhood, it is summer here while winter spits its bitter chill against his neck in the frozen palace of his memory. But here, and now, he has lazy flesh under his hand, that lifts with slowly deepening breaths, and that anchors him, that ties him to this place, to this summer, that takes his gaze into the infinity of the sky, but will not allow him to leave.

He watches still, as he listens to his lover sleep, as the stretched blue of the sky lowers itself like a blanket, as cloud comes boiling in over mountains that might be better left on postcards or in frames. He watches as they gather, and darken, and the sky is warm and heavy, almost pregnant. He is grateful somehow, glad he is held down now by something more than a hand on his lover's back, because he needs that, he thinks. Today. He needs to be reminded of the earth, of how things really are, needs to be reminded that he cannot just float off into beauty, into the impossible dream. The world does not work that way, and the solidity of the storm front echoes that belief. He forgets that it too is as insubstantial as vapour and mercury, he forgets that, because he does not want to remember.

The sky opens with a gentle kiss, it is cool on his skin, not cold, for it is summer here, endless summer, except that he knows that it will end. His lover's breath hitches, at the feel of patterning drops, and at once Billy rolls against him, rubbing his body, blood-warm, summer-hot, against the other's, pressing his shoulders down into the grass, feeling the prickle of blades against his side. The other man subsides, groaning slightly into the prison of his folded arms, and leaning ecstatically over his lover's broader form, Billy begins to kiss away the rain.

Each kiss tastes of different shores, evaporated dew of many isles, his own not least among them, and his lips are wet and cool. He smoothes a hand, delicate and damp, across a forehead too high for comfort, the hair darker than its usual dusty gold. This comes from home, he tells himself, water and life, the river Clyde as it meanders past dirty Glasgow streets. This is home, today of all days.

Life in the rain. He smoothes another hand, fine-boned, pale and translucent, along the planes and shifting question marks of his lover's back. The rain is more substantial now, it merges with itself, Billy can no longer tell each drop apart as it falls. His face is wet, raining too, now no-one can see its fall, and the taste of salt is sharp at the corners of his mouth. He blinks and things blur into insubstantiality, and he blinks again, frantic for connection. His lover's back is cool now too, but solid, so solid, as Billy clings and strokes. Each tiny imperfection serves to only emphasise the whole, and Billy finds he needs these reminders, that beauty is in everything, beauty in the flaws. He moves the paths of his kisses and he counts as he discovers each tiny freckle, each perfect mole. His lover wriggles, but Billy is strong, strong enough to handle everything, he always has been.

He'll ring her later, his sister, his Mags, when she will be awake, he'll ring her and they'll talk. They'll talk of nothing, her kids, his work, all the small things. They'll not mention winter, or the crows that cry in irritable chorus around Cranhill Church. He'll not mention summer, and the sky that wants him to drift away, to belong to it, to them, wherever they are gone. The beautiful sky that takes him half a world away, and yet never lets him go.

It was winter then, that second time, and there was snow on the ground, dirty and trampled, mucky and used and filthy. They would both rest forever in that dirt and he couldn't bear the thought of it. So he remembers looking up, looking up into infinity, as cold air whipped his coat about and the voices droned on, thin voices that the wind blew away even as they sang their hymns. He looked up into beauty, ethereal, eternal, and had known he'd wanted to follow them. He'd wanted…

He kisses each freckle, counts them anew. His lover gasps and tries to turn, but Billy holds him down, holds them both fast to the earth. On this day of all days, he needs this, to remind him why he stays, needs to read the pages of life's mysteries in marks upon warm skin. After all, this too will soon be gone. He knows that, has known that for years now, ever since the boy became a man. Nothing lasts, it drifts, and changes, and passes on, they are all clouds shifting in an endless, empty sky.

He kisses the point of a shoulder blade, the hollow at the base of the skull, where tiny tufted hairs tickle his nose. He rests there for a time, breathing, tasting the lightning, but at last moves on. His mouth whispers across the creased skin until he stops his counting, his tally done at last, his lips resting softly against the strong column of his lover's neck. They frame the last freckle, this imperfect beauty, and Billy presses in, feeling the steady pulse under his tongue, feeling him twitch and faintly shiver beneath his hands.

He leans there, his eyes shut, hiding from the sky. His lover turns, sliding on wet grass, and this time Billy lets him, slithering in his arms, slippery as memory. He knows that he is stronger than this, he knows it, he has always been the strong one. But today of all days, half a world away from winter, he lets Dom hold him. He lets Dom hold him in the rain.


End file.
